Page 46 of Beauty and the Bayou

“She splinted up Jerry’s broken leg that time, too,” Mitch said of Sawyer’s dad.“I’ll never forget the way he yelled.”

Chase frowned.“Holy shit.She shouldn’t just be splinting broken legs.Did she send him to the hospital after?”

“What for?”Mitch asked.

“To x-ray his leg,” Chase said.

“He didn’t need an X-ray.It wasobviouslybroken,” Owen said.“Anyone could see that.”

“What if he needed pins or something placed?He definitely needed to have the bone set.And casted.”Chase was looking at them all with disbelief.

“She did set it,” Josh said.“Moved the bones back where they were supposed to be before she splinted it.Geez.”

Chase looked at them as if he couldn’t tell if they were kidding or not.

They weren’t.

He looked down at his hand.“Ellie put some ointment on my hand after she got the sliver out.She wouldn’t tell me what was in it.She said it’s because I’m going off to med school and I might give the recipe to some big pharma company and they’d sell if for a hundred bucks a bottle when it only costs her three seventy-two to make it.”

“She’s completely serious about that,” Kennedy told him.

“It’s safe, though, right?”Chase asked.

“She’s been putting shit like that on us all our lives and we’re…basically okay,” Owen said with a smirk.

“She’s used this same stuff on you?”Chase clarified.

“Well…” Owen looked around and they all shrugged.“She doesn’t tell us what’s in it, either.I guess we wouldn’t really know.”

“Might be nothin’ but good old mud or something, honestly,” Josh said.

“Though, makes sense to experiment on the new guy,” Kennedy said thoughtfully.“I mean, it’s possible the side effects won’t kick in until you’re long gone and can’t prove it happened here.”

“Ah, good point,” Josh said with a nod.

Sawyer watched Chase.He wondered if the kid realized they were fucking with him.And that them fucking with him meant that they liked him and that he was an adopted part of the family now.

“And I suppose that Ellie has about a dozen alibis in case I would try to turn her in?”Chase asked.

Sawyer grinned.Yeah, the kid knew they were messing with him.That was good.

“Who ya gonna turn her in to?”Josh asked.

“The cops?The health department?The FDA?”Chase asked.But he was smiling.

Maddie snorted.“They’re gonna believe that little old lady held you down and smeared you with some strange potion against your will?”

“Well, she didn’t reallyaskif it was okay,” Chase said.

They all laughed.

“Just fyi,” Maddie said.“Don’t waste your time ‘turning her in’ to the local cop.George swears by Cora’s homemade face masks.”

“The local cop uses face masks?”Chase asked.

“Oh, sure,” Owen said.“But hereallyloves her foot soaks.”

“What’s inthose?”Chase asked.

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